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A few days ago I got a very odd bit of news that struck me at first as just plain weird, then slowly the possibilities began to occur to me. A few days ago, seeming out of the blue, Blizzard tore itself away from it’s WoW daze and released a patch for Diablo II, a game that is eight years old! Now admittedly, due to all the excitement around a possible release date for the long awaited Starcraft II, Blizzard may be feeling nostalgic. In addition, perhaps this is related to the rumored (but still highly doubtful) development of Diablo III.

The new patch brings Diablo II to v1.12 and fixes a few lingering bugs but the main point of the patch is that makes it possible for the game to be played without the CD. One or two people I spoke to said they believe this is mainly to clear the decks for this to be a game Blizzard offers for direct download, a nice way to make a few more bucks on an old but beloved classic. This started me to thinking about the possibility Diablo II without the CD requirement…and why Blizzard would care and spend the time developing and releasing the patch for such an old game.

Hmmm..bear with me here. Older game, not terribly graphically intensive, episodic and easy to play in short bursts, keyboard controlled, engaging storyline possibly now to be continued in a new game, mature and enjoyable multiplayer online engine, strong object building/in game economy features and no CD needed to play. Wouldn’t those be all the elements needed in a game designed to be played on a UMPC, either standalone or online? Perhaps the UMPC/Casual market is in Blizzard’s sights with this update?

Close your eyes, and think about playing Diablo on an Eee or an MSI Wind. Yes…it could work and work quite well…and it could be a hell of a bullet point when college kids (and other, perhaps..umm…older gamers) are looking to buy a laptop this September.

Zealot (469 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).